What is ROI?

Return on investment refers to the result from money being outlaid for a (generally) business endeavour. In internet marketing, ROI refers the success or otherwise of a marketing campaign and it is used as a measure of whether the cost of the campaign can be justified by the profits or returns from the campaign. This is most often used when people are analysing the success or otherwise of a Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising campaign. When you pay for each click through from your ads, you don’t want to be spending a lot of money on something that will have little profitable return.

Should you be measuring ROI?

The simple answer is yes. If you spend money on advertising and it costs you more money that it brings in, then you need to understand why. The money you are outlaying should be working hard to maximise your business profits, which means you need to look carefully at what steps you could take to ensure that this happens. Your PPC campaign for example, may need to be analysed to look at whether it generates better results at different times of the day, days of the week or in different geographic regions. This analysis of your internet marketing ROI will provide you with the kind of data that you need to refine the advertisements you have on offer.

Options for measuring ROI online

The use of analytics is the key way in which ROI is measured to improve online marketing efforts. Analytics can help you to measure a number of different factors that are important to ensure that you achieve the results you require to make your business a success. If you carry out a PPC advertising campaign, then you may wish to use the analytics on that campaign to run different versions of your ads and assess which are more successful. That will help you to determine which combinations of keywords in your ads generate the highest amount of traffic and also the highest level of converting traffic. If you are running a campaign then you need to be producing results from the ads that you are placing online. PPC by its very nature costs you money each time someone clicks on your ad. If the internet marketing ROI is not going well and your ads are bringing in little revenue, then you want to be on top of this right away.

Taking action to improve internet marketing ROI

If your ROI is not looking as great as you would like it to be, there are a range of things you could do to improve this. Among the most important are the following -

Select more specific keywords – If the keywords you are using are bringing in a lot of visitors with a general interest about the products or services you are selling, then you need to improve the quality of the traffic you are getting. By choosing more specific words and sending out a more targeted message in your ad campaign, you’ll have more success attracting and selling to your target audience

Reduce the cost of the adverts you are running – If you can fine tune your ads to target the audience you are after, this will help reduce the cost of the ads as you will be offsetting them with sales, however you can do more. The words you use for your PPC (especially with AdWords) have a value attached to them. If you could create campaigns with less expensive words that generate strong results, then you will improve the number of sales you get in proportion to the click through rate on your PPC ads, which means a better ROI for your campaign.

Ensure that your ads match up with the pages they lead to – If you find that you get a strong response but you lose people quickly when they arrive at your site, then you may want to look at improving the page that visitors to your site arrive at. When the page where people arrive is not strong, then you will quickly lose their interest before you really have a chance to sell your products and services.

Through the use of careful strategies that take into consideration the internet marketing ROI of your ad campaign and the way it ties in to your website, you can boost your profits successfully. Should you be having any problems, then seeking help or finding ways to improve your campaign will be the first step to increasing your success online and ensuring that you have a solid return on investment.

To your massive success

Guy

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Pay Per Click or PPC Advertising

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is a means of promoting your site and creating links to your site online. One of the most common forms of PPC ads are those run by Google AdSense. If you have ever done a Google searched and seen those ad results at the very top and on the right hand side of the page, those are one example of PPC ads. Using these ads is one option for getting your sight to the top of the search engine rankings while your SEO is taking effect. When your PPC ads are displayed, you pay a fee when someone clicks on that ad and is directed to your website. If you are carrying out an internet marketing campaign, these ads are a highly effective way of getting traffic to your site.

Article Marketing

A lot of internet marketing is about increasing search engine ranking and building relationships with potential customers. An internet marketing campaign that includes article marketing does a little of both. The expression article marketing refers to the placement of articles in large directories where they are connected to an author box. This author box usually includes a site link and brief author bio. The major reason that people carry out article marketing is because it is one of the most effective ways to build a lot of quality backlinks to a website, encouraging bots to visit the site and thereby improving page ranking in the search engines. The added benefit of article marketing is that by sharing knowledge, you have the opportunity to position yourself as an expert in your field. That makes article marketing the perfect opportunity to begin building customer loyalty and confidence.

Social Networking

Social networking is the connecting with other like minded people on the internet. Just as you would have developed connections in your business life through networking, staying in touch with colleagues at work and so on; so too you meet people and build networks through online business and social activity. Networking online could be carried out via sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn, or it could be via the micro blogging site, Twitter. The increasing popularity of social networks and development of online connections means that even those people who are rarely online themselves will have heard of the likes of Facebook and Twitter in this day and age. To carry out a successful internet marketing campaign, you need to maximise the potential of these sites and investigate the many avenues available for online promotion and advertising that are offered by social networks.

Blogging

An internet marketing campaign that is carried out with blogging is done with the focus on increasing your exposure to potential customers. Blogging is a useful way to build a strong customer relationship, based upon the sharing knowledge and demonstrating your expertise in your field. Customers and potential customers have a means to interact and discuss the topic you are conversant in and you can establish yourself as an expert in their minds. From an internet marketing perspective, this is an invaluable way to begin to send a lot of highly targeted traffic from your blog to your business website. The customers you receive will be more willing to buy as you are already someone that they have a degree of confidence and trust in. You’ll also find that this option brings in more highly targeted traffic to your site, as they blog readers undoubtedly already have an interest in the types of products and services you are selling.
Running an internet marketing campaign requires that you understand how to draw in highly targeted traffic, so that your website receives plenty of eager buyers.

Through the careful management of an online marketing and advertising campaign, it is possible to achieve your goal of increasing your business sales and profitability. If you find that you are a bit overwhelmed about where to begin, then approaching a consultant with expertise in this field could get you started on the right track.

To your massive success

Guy

P.S Please link to us if you enjoyed this post on running a successful internet marketing campaign

The following are some of the most important internet marketing tactics that you want to apply in order to succeed with your online business marketing:

Search Engine Optimization – SEO is the process of implementing onsite and offsite strategies that will propel your site to the top of the search engine ranks. By doing this, you are in a position to drive more highly targeted traffic to your site in greater volumes. This is just what you need in order to improve your business turnover and increase your revenue and online sales. Once you master this strategy and learn to manage your website SEO successfully, you have a powerful, free way of generating a significant amount of traffic for your webpage.

Pay Per Click – PPC is another of the internet marketing tactics that you could use in your online promotion for great success. This is a process of promotion whereby you place ads on various sites online. The ads are generally matched to sites by the topics that are on the page where they are placed. When a user clicks on your ad you pay a small fee, which has both up and down sides. The upside is that you only pay for people that click through to your site. The downside is that you have to have this method carefully managed or you run the risk of paying for a lot of clicks that bring in few serious buyers. If you do master this, it will be a highly effective way of promoting your business to people with a genuine interest in the type of business you run.

Social Networking – These internet marketing tactics involve the development of online business relationships as a means of connecting with your current and prospective customers. This strategy will help you to create a strong connection with customers and build a degree of trust. Through strong internet marketing via social networking, you’ll be able to establish yourself as an expert in your area and develop customer loyalty. That will encourage would be buyers to make their first purchase and help to develop strong repeat patronage.

Blogging – Writing your own blog is a good way to demonstrate your expertise in your field. Just the same as you would build a strong connection with people via social networking, so too you will build a strong business relationship via a business blog. This can then be used as a step towards converting people into customers and helping them to make the decision to use your products or services. The creation of a blog can be done for free and it is also a good option for increasing the search engine rank of your webpage.

Email marketing – Among all of the internet marketing tactics available to you, this is one of the most highly targeted marketing strategies. Once you have a list of potential customers or repeat customers that you are able to send emails to, you have the option to directly communicate with these customers. You can develop customer confidence through the sharing of useful, product related information via the email medium. The key to doing this successfully is to keep product promotion on the light side. Through the information you share, you’ll develop a strong customer following and this will provide you with the business base you need to generate a strong turnover and positive returns for your online business.

Developing strong internet marketing tactics is a good way to create a solid base for your business. Once you master driving traffic to your website, you’ll have a targeted audience and a steady stream of potential customers beating a path to your door. This is just what you need to ensure you achieve sales and meet your goals for business growth and profit.

1. Erics Tips.com
2. Dave’s Online Videos

You will find all the information you need, to learn how to build your own website and you will also find lots of other excellent information about how to succeed online.

In part 3 of my blueprint for online success, we are going to examine perhaps the most critical piece of the puzzle: Driving targeted traffic. Once your website is up and running you must spend a large portion of your time driving visitors with some interest in the product you are selling. The keyword to note here is ‘targeted traffic’. There is no point driving visitors to your website if they have no interest in the product that you are selling. I would rather have 1000 targeted visitors compared to 100,000 untargeted visitors. You only want people that have a particular interest in your niche or product because the chance of converting them is going to be far higher.

The internet has revolutionised the way the world does business. Whereas in the past it was all about mass marketing average products to everyone and anyone, now it is all about marketing quality products to a smaller more responsive niche. If you are intending to mass market to then you’d better bring your cheque book. The old business model of buying ad space on T.V. and hoping to interrupt people enough so that they buy your product is drawing to a close. The new era is all about marketing to a specific pool of people who actually have some pre-interest in your product (for a more detailed explanation of this I highly recommend that you check out Seth Godin’s excellent book Meatball Sundae). So you must be smart with your traffic. Only market to people who are interested in your niche and work on driving targeted traffic to your website.

The way I see it there are 3 main types of website traffic, paid traffic, free traffic and affiliate traffic. Each type of traffic has its own advantages and disadvantages and the type of traffic that you drive to your website will depend on your budget, your aptitude for hard work and the number of hours that you have in the day. Furthermore within these categories there are many different ways of driving traffic. Some are more effective than others and it can take a lot of trial and error before you find a method that really works for you. It would very difficult for you to utilise all methods, so my advice is pick some core traffic generation methods and stick with them. Let’s have a look at each different method.

Paid Traffic –

This is an excellent way to get highly targeted traffic to your website very quickly. The downside is of course that you have to pay for it! Having said that if you know your metrics .i.e. Cost per visitor, conversion rate etc, you can really make it work. Here are some excellent sources of paid traffic.

1. Pay Per Click – Probably the most popular method of paid traffic. When someone types a keyword into the search engines, your ad will display on the front page of the search engine. You only pay when your ad is clicked hence the name pay per click. It is a very attractive form of advertising because you are showing ads to highly targeted visitors (after all they are the ones who typed in the keywords). However please be aware that PPC can get extremely expensive and you can burn through cash very quickly (think $1000’s of dollars in a matter of hours). I highly recommend you check out Perry Marshall who is known as the guru of adwords. Google, Yahoo and MSN all run PPC programs, although Google Adswords is probably the best known.

2. Banner Advertisements – You simply display a banner on another website and a visitor clicks on that banner and comes to your website.This can be done on a CPC basis (cost per click) or CPM (Cost per thousand impression) basis. This can be a very good way of driving targeted traffic to your website but again you need to know your metrics. There are thousands of websites in every conceivably niche possible that have banner ad space on their website.

3. Text Link Ads – These are ads that appear as hyperlinks within text on a page. Note that although Google Webmaster Guidelines frowns upon the buying and selling of links many people still do it and it can be a good way to drive some traffic to your site. Also you get the SEO benefit of having a backlink.

4. Ezine Ads- Ezines are essentially electronic newsletters that get sent to a list of subscribers, also many ezines can be targeted towards specific niches. The list of subscribers can be huge and it can give you are opportunity to have your ad read by tens of thousands of people. Furthermore you can purchase something called ‘solo’ ads, this means that your ad will shown exclusively on its own (ie. Without any other advertisers).

5. Email Lists – It is possible to buy email lists of people who have opted in to receive emails and adverts. There are many email list brokers available who will be willing to sell you a list although you should always perform some due diligence before buying any lists as there are some unethical operators out there.

6. Content Network – Many website owners opt to display adverts on their website and get some money every time somebody clicks on the ad. As an advertiser you can tell Google if you want to advertise across its network. You can do this on either a CPC (cost per click) or CPM (Cost per thousand impression) basis. This can be an excellent way of driving traffic to your website. But again you need to understand your metrics and set your budget accordingly.

7. Pay Per View – Otherwise known as PPV, ads appear in the form of a pop up on certain computers where the owner had agreed to receive them. As an advertiser you pay a certain amount every time the ad is shown. I haven’t had much experience with this however there are people who make a lot of money out of it. I recommend that you check out this blog post to find out about it in more detail. Be warned though, like PPC, if you don’t know what you are doing then you can burn through money extremely quickly.

Free Traffic

If you have no money but are keen to start earning money on the internet, then luckily there are many ways to drive free targeted traffic. Remember that while these methods may be free there are going to cost you a lot of time.

1. Article Marketing – Perhaps the most loved of all free methods, you simply write an article, put a link at the bottom of the article that points back to your website and then submit it to an article directory. You get to reach the tens of thousands of people who visit article directories every day. Also if your article is well written and optimised then there is a good chance that the article is will appear in the search engines. While it can take quite a lot of time and effort to write a decent article, you can be rewarded with a nice amount of visitors. There are literally thousands of article directories on the net that you can submit to.

2. SEO or Search Engine Optimisation – You may have noticed that I have talked a lot about SEO (search engine optimisation) this is because it is an excellent way of driving lots of targeted traffic to your website. I think approximately 80% of all people find websites from the search engines, so if you are not ranking in them then you are missing out on a huge amount of traffic. The best part of search engine optimisation is that it is totally free to do. Once you learn the basics it is very easy to optimise a website for the search engines and it can really drive a lot of traffic for you. I will be doing a separate post of keyword research, however if you are planning to use SEO to rank in the search engines, then I highly recommend that you start by targeting long-tail keywords or phrases that have less competition and are easy to rank for.

3. Forum Commenting – What better place to find prospective customers than in a forum. Make sure that you don’t spam forums and try to build up rapport with other people within it. Also some forums allow you to leave a signature so it can be an excellent way of driving traffic to your website. Plus you get a nice backlink.

4. Blog Commenting – Find blogs that are relevant to your niche and leave a thoughtful and relevant comment and you may find a trickle of traffic back to your website.

5. Yahoo Answers- Many people are still searching for answers to their problems and you can always answer them and put a link back to your website. As long as you make an effort to answer their question sincerely and your website is relevant then should be able to drive a good amount of website traffic.

6. Press Releases – There are many free press release sites that allow you to promote your site. Use them wisely and not only will you get some nice targeted traffic you will also get a good backlink to your site.

7. Social Media – I’m sure by now you’ve heard of Digg, Twitter and Facebook. You can use these platforms to build a community and send some traffic to your site. People have different opinions on the value of social media. Some people say that the traffic is hard to monetise while others make a full time living out of it. I’m kind of on the fence, I certainly wouldn’t say no to being on the front page of Digg but as the same time I view social media as a chance to interact with other people as opposed to purely selling to them.

8. Craigslist Posting – Craigslist allows you to pose free classified adverts, it can be time consuming but it can also attract a decent amount of traffic. Luckily there are many ‘Craiglist Posters’ who will do the job very cheaply.

Affiliate Traffic

If you own a product then you can always use affiliates to drive traffic to your website. The great thing about using affiliates to drive traffic is that you only pay on results ie. When they make a sale. For example you might have a $47 dollar product and you might agree to pay affiliates 75% of any sale they generate (of course this will depend on your margins). So essentially it is free traffic, ie you’re not paying anything for it. By using affiliates to promote your products you have nothing to lose and absolutely everything to gain. The World Wide Web is full of affiliates who are actively looking for products to promote, why not make your product one of them?

*** I do want to make one small point about using affiliates to promote your products. In my opinion you should only use affiliates to promote your products after you have tested out your product and its conversion. Do not use affiliates as your guinea pigs. It’s not fair on them and if it turns out that the product hasn’t converted well then you may spoil any future relationship with them. Always test your product and when you find out that it is converting well, invite affiliates to promote it for you. Trust me you’ll be thankful you did this when you launch your next product and have an army of affiliates waiting to promote it 

That concludes part 3 of my blueprint for online success. I am sure that there are many other ways to drive traffic but as I said you simply don’t have the time to do all of them. Pick the methods that best suit your budget and time. For example you may decide that you want to master SEO and PPC, that’s fine and it will serve you well. Just remember there is no magic bullet, traffic generation like everything else on the internet takes hard work, dedication and persistence. If you want to succeed online then you have to master how to generate it.

To your massive success,

Guy

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